“Our boat drums land, tambo té, tambo té”, is the phrase that can be read on the white wall of the Oval gallery at MAAT, in Lisbon. In the center of the room, there is one of the largest sculptures created by the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto, born in 1964, entitled Our Drum Land Boat. And it will be on view at the museum until October 7th. For months, the artist developed this sculpture in the shape of a boat to dialogue with the architectural space of MAAT and the Tagus River. Stretching from the ceiling of the gallery to the floor, the boat is made of calico – a cotton fabric originally from India but widespread in Brazil. Despite its flower prints, the fabric was cut into strips, stretched and then used to crochet using a technique developed over years in the artist’s studio in Rio de Janeiro and which the artist learned to do in 1994 under the influence of his grandfather.
Drums from different countries are incorporated throughout the sculpture, from Brazil to Thailand, and visitors are invited to enter the boat (with or without shoes) to feel the land and can play the respective drums.
For the artist, present at the presentation of the exhibition to the media, the greatest difficulty of the piece was creating its concept. Initially it started as a fish, then a planisphere and, finally, the drum-land boat. However, he explains “this piece did not stop being a fish, a planisphere, and in fact it was always a boat, without me realizing it. It’s curious because I wanted to have a boat and I didn’t know how to represent that boat”, explained the artist to DN. Ernesto Neto also mentioned that the union between the fabric and the body of the drums was another challenge during its design: “The instrument is a foreign object. It’s geometric, it’s harder and more stable.”
